


your caffeine addiction

by akacz



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 17:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1274701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akacz/pseuds/akacz





	your caffeine addiction

She works in a coffee shop. Of course she does. It’s practically cliché.  
  
You don’t even drink coffee, just tea, and you used to go someplace else entirely but the coffee shop was the closest place to your new job, so you went in one time for lunch and your thoughts never left.  
  
They really should have; she looks old enough, but still a lot younger than you. What are you doing feeling enamored with some random teenager? Six years feels like a lot younger, anyway, not that you know why you think she’s 18 to your 24, it’s just something you came up with. You’ve come up with a lot of things for the snarky but good-natured blonde girl who works her shift during your breaks (headcanons, you’d call them, but that sounds weird to apply to a real person, much less one you have a crush on).   
  
Some things you don’t have to come up with though. Like the fact her name is Rose, because it says so on her name tag. Or the fact she’s almost painfully cute, because when you looked at her the first time she took your order, well, let’s say you’ve never been as good at hiding your flush as you’d like to be.   
  
It wasn’t until you’ve been going there for two weeks, at the same time, ordering the exact same thing, that it dawned on you that you might seem kind of like a creeper. In fact, you almost reassured her you were no such thing the next time you went in once you realized it, but that seemed like it made you even more creepy if you are the kind of person who people thought was a creeper and needed to apologize for it. Instead, you started ordering something different so it might seem like you had a genuine interest in the tea itself, which you did, and not in the girl at all, which you also did but didn’t want her to know about.  
  
So instead of Earl Grey, last week you got full leaf chai, and this week you got chai lattes. You don’t think you’re being very convincing after all about your sense of tea-based adventure, and you do think she knows that, the way she smirked at you today, but she doesn’t say anything about it, and so neither do you. Except thank you and have a nice day. Like always.   
  
It really is a bit daft, how much you think about her. She’s what, in high school, for goodness sake. You’ve been out of university two years. You have your own apartment. As much as anything, what could you possibly have in common with the barista you always wait for on your lunch break. She wears black lipstick! Do you want to date the kind of kid who wears black lipstick?  
  
You do, you point out to yourself with an internal sigh as you stare off across the empty shop. She’s in the corner of your eye when you face this way, and she’s currently leaning back on the counter looking bored, if body language is any good indication. You’ve determined (that is, decided in the fantasies you most certainly don’t have about painfully cute girls and how much more mature they seem for their age than a lot of your current friends are like at yours, despite barely saying two words outside of what’s necessary for the purchase of a single hot beverage) that her body language is a reliable broadcast of her attitude.  
  
Plus, if you weren’t so busy trying to think about how well you think you know her as if it was destined for you to meet her, you would’ve been paying attention when she had twisted around non-chalantly to say as much.  
  
"Pardon?" you sputter, a little too frantically, in a way you’re pretty sure she notices whether either of you acknowledges it or not.   
  
"Nothing, just bored." You’re staring. She raises an eyebrow at you expectantly. Perhaps you should stop staring. Perhaps if your heart would quit screaming in your ears like the excited schoolgirl you thought you had stopped being ten years ago you could manage to do that. Perhaps saying something back would be a good idea too. "Want me to order something?" Oh yes, Kanaya, she’ll swoon now. No she won’t, and you don’t want her to, because you do not need her returning a crush on you when you have a job to get back to focus on and don’t go much in for frivolous relations, and anyway —  
  
"But then I’ll have to work," she counters, pouting slightly. You feel confused for a split second before catching on that she isn’t actually refusing. She’s just making conversation. You sit up a bit straighter, a hesitant grin appearing, and quickly casting a net around your thoughts for a way to keep it going, offer, "That’s what they pay you for. I should order something ridiculously complicated. To make sure you earn it."   
  
Her shoulders slouch and she groans dramatically. “You’re so mean.” She hasn’t bitten back at you. Wait. Did you misjudge? “I was just –” “I know, dear,” she assures you, and you wish that you hadn’t heard her call almost everyone that at least a dozen times. “You don’t have to tell me when you’re joking.” She pulls herself back together, and so do you, although in different ways for different reasons.   
  
She turns away and starts putting a drink together at one of the machines. You bite on the inside of your lower lip a little bit. Did you ruin it by not keeping up the game? So much for being the sophisticated older woman in the fantasies you certainly don’t have. Sighing, and you know it isn’t silent this time, you go back to holding onto your teacup and looking across the coffee shop, feeling uncharacteristically forlorn.  
  
"Hey. Here." You glance over at the counter by the till, and she pushes a cup an inch closer. "Come here," she repeats, patiently, like she’s coaxing a stray cat over. She’s definitely a cat person, you think. Damnit, you have to stop doing that kind of thing. Maybe you should get a cat…   
  
Damnit, you’re not even going to START doing that kind of thing.   
  
Pushing your chair back you get up and do as she says, standing with your hands resting lightly on the counter and your eyes looking down at the cup of coffee while your brow knits in confusion. No move is made to take the coffee. You don’t drink it. She knows that. “I know you don’t drink it.” See? You casually ignore the fact she pays attention to what you order, and don’t feel special at all about being remembered when you’ve been doing this for basically a month now. Nope. You’re not that silly. Certainly not.   
  
"But just try it once." Her soft hand reaches out and pushes it towards you a second time, and you know it’s soft because when it rubs against yours she lets go before you can grab it, but you can let the feeling linger. You swing your attention up in exasperation with yourself to ask something, anything, you’re just sick of your own denial, and it all gets drowned out by a rush in your ears when she pierces you with an unexpectedly serious look for a fleeting second and then leans across and kisses you briefly before either of you can stop her.  
  
"You should try anything once," she says, already pulled back and pressing keys on the register as if that hadn’t happened. You didn’t even give her anything. It occurs to you she’s distracting herself and oh stars, she’s twice as cute when she’s hiding something beneath all that cutting confidence.   
  
You’re staring again. This time, she doesn’t ignore it. Pushing the drawer shut, she looks up at you with a quirked eyebrow.   
  
"Yes dear?" She gives you a twisted smirk, and she looks so cocky that you suddenly smile gently in relief as it washes over you properly and she’s everything you think she is. She’s everything you would expect from her when you would daydream about her, not that you ever did except hypothetically, of course.   
  
That’s not what she would expect from you, though, not the way her expression fades away. Her face is carefully controlled to be completely neutral, and you’ve determined that that means she isn’t sure what’s going on. You’ve been watching her make enough drinks for enough people that you know how she gets when somebody orders something she isn’t as familiar with.  
  
You pick the cup up and turn away to return to your seat, both hands wrapped around it to hold it like treasure. “If you say so dear,” you answer lightly before sitting down, and without looking at her still you know she’s smirking again and relaxing the same way you’re relaxing against the wooden back of your seat.   
  
"I do, Kanaya." You raise the cup and breathe it in. "Yes, Rose." The coffee burns down, and you don’t care, because Rose kissed you and knows your name and you have a crush on a teenager working at a coffee shop because you always end up a cliché, and you don’t care about that either because you’ll be anything if you get to have that girl say your name again.


End file.
